How DEYA Brewing manages production planning, forecasting, and visibility with Breww

Based in Cheltenham, DEYA Brewing Company is an independent brewery known for its fresh, hop-forward beers.

We spoke with Elliot, Production Manager at DEYA, about how the team uses Breww across production, from brew scheduling and packaging planning to daily handovers, forecasting and moving away from paper-based processes.

Watch the full case study video here

Tell us about your role and how production is structured day to day.

My role is Production Manager. I'm in charge of setting up the day-to-day schedule, the brew schedule and packaging schedule.

We use Breww for all of that. The way we schedule it is we set out our schedule two months in advance, so we decide on what beers we're going to brew. Off the back of that we create recipes, and in Breww create the beer name, create the products, and schedule everything using the batch scheduling feature.

How long have you been using Breww, and what did the transition look like?

We've been using Breww for almost exactly a year now. It was quite a lot of work to get set up. We used the startup guide, and we assigned different people different jobs based on that guide, which was really helpful.

With any new system, it's quite daunting at the start. But everyone's bought into it and we've been able to move away from all the external spreadsheets, which is great.

What was the biggest operational change for the production team?

Previously, all of our briefings, all of our check sheets, were on paper. Getting the team to buy into working on a paperless system was difficult. But with everyone buying in and a bit of focus on it, it worked really well.

Now we are, I would say, 95% paperless, which is really good.

Previously, all of our briefings, all of our check sheets, were on paper. Now we are, I would say, 95% paperless.

Was there a moment where Breww felt fully embedded?

The point at which Breww felt embedded had two points.

At the start of the financial year where we made the jump, we were about 80% of the way there. We were still working on paper for recipes at the time. Then we had a transitional phase where we had a paper copy and the Breww copy side by side just to make sure everything checked out. The point where it felt properly embedded was probably where we ditched the paper and went fully on Breww.

How has moving away from spreadsheets changed things?

The main thing with moving away from spreadsheets is just having fewer places to look for things. Less confusion, less chances of duplication. You know, one spreadsheet saying one thing and another saying something else, and then two people are doing different things.

Breww has allowed us to bring that all together into one place.

The main thing with moving away from spreadsheets is just having fewer places to look for things. Less confusion, less chances of duplication. Breww’s allowed us to bring that all together into one place.

We now have one spreadsheet that we use to start the process, basically laying out what the brew schedule is going to be.

From that one spreadsheet, everything is fed into Breww and then that's the sole point of truth.

How do you use Breww during your daily handovers?

We have two shifts in the brew team. In the middle of the day we have a handover point, essentially a meeting with the whole brew team.

We have Breww up on a big TV screen, with all the tank statuses and properties visible. We work through tank by tank, making sure everything's happy and making sure all the data has been entered into Breww properly.

It's a really powerful thing. When something's going wrong, it tends to be picked up a lot earlier than it previously was because you've got everyone's eyes on it.

Has that visibility helped during busy periods?

Now we've got it up and running, it allows me or Gareth, our Head Brewer, to see what's going on in the cellar from a distance, which is great. Once you can trust that the data in there is all up to date, it's great when you look at a dashboard that you can access from anywhere.

On the packaging side of things, during busy periods we're able to plan our packaging a lot better than we were before. Previously, our packaging was all in an external spreadsheet. Things might get changed in one place and not the other.

Whereas a change in Breww is the truth.

The forecasting has been really helpful as well. We've tried to move much more towards just-in-time production recently, making sure that our beer leaving is as fresh as possible. Having a forecast in there and being able to change the packaging, which then changes how your forecast looks, is really great.

How does Breww help with traceability?

The warehouse team log each batch and ingredient when it comes in, and that filters through the whole process for the brew.

If we ever had a recall, hopefully never, there’s really good functionality to trace that stock right back to its source batch. That makes audit day very easy.

How do you use pre-packaging approvals?

We use pre-packaging approvals to basically have a check for sensory sign-off, clarity sign-off and physical sign-off. That's really helpful.

How have you found Breww's support?

The help sections on Breww are really helpful. Cooper has been really helpful too. Quite often I find myself looking for something and I just put a question in there, and it's really helpful. Feature requests and support tickets get answered very quickly as well, which is great.

Cooper is just a really intuitive way of asking a question like a human, and it gives you a pretty human-like response.

Are there any integrations that have made a difference?

We use the Kegstar integration, which is great. We're able to pull a report off once a month and send that to Kegstar through the app.

What would you tell another production-focused brewery considering Breww?

Definitely, it's a great system to use. My one piece of advice would be do the work upfront. Make sure you're all properly set up so that on switch day you're good to go and everyone knows what you're doing. But in terms of managing production and having everything in one place, it's a great system.

Having a live view of data is probably the best thing. If the packaging team want to go on and see what stage a beer is at, they can — rather than it being on a clipboard somewhere.